On this day last January, one was killed and three were wounded by suspected gang violence in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (In Chicago four were murdered on January 6. Thirty-two residents of Chicago were murdered in January 2015. For the entire year Chicago reported at least 468 murders, the highest metro murder rate in the United States. The population of Chicago is about 2.8 million.)

I will be on leave from Homeland Security Watch. When I may return is indefinite. I have cued up several Friday Free Forums for continued contributions. I leave you with an admonition from the Italian baroque painter Salvator Rosa, “Keep silent unless what you are going to say is better than silence.” A particular challenge given the issues that confront us and the character of our times.

Federal immigration authorities apprehended 121 adults and children in raids over the New Year’s weekend as part of a nationwide operation to deport a new wave of illegal immigrants.

The families taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were living in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina, [DHS Secretary] Johnson said in a statement. They are being held temporarily in federal detention centers before being deported to Central America…

The raids were the first in a broad operation by the Obama administration that is targeting for deportation hundreds of families that have crossed the southern border illegally since the start of last year.

According to a January 5 report in the Washington Post, El Salvador is now the murder capital of the Western Hemisphere. “The 2015 murder rate of about 104 homicides per 100,000 people, an increase of about 70 percent from the year before, is estimated to be among the highest in the world for countries not at war, far surpassing neighboring Honduras, which had held the title of murder capital in recent years.”

Given the profound risks Central American migrants face in their home countries, many legal experts perceive a significant majority of Central American migrants meet the standards for refugee status under the Immigration and Nationality Act. But given an overburdened immigration court system and lack of legal counsel for migrants, many who are legally (and morally?) qualified for such status are unable to effectively make their claim.

Late Tuesday the Board of Immigration Appeals temporarily halted the deportation of at least twelve of those taken into custody over the weekend. According to the Houston Chronicle, “nearly all of the small pool of immigrants who received legal assistance this week obtained a temporary delay in their deportation show[ing] they are being wrongly removed… many face deportation orders simply because they don’t know they must show up to court or are afraid to or because they lack legal help to navigate the complex asylum process.”